Electronic Music

Latest Articles

Exploring the frosty electronic pleasures of Brahms

Digital symphony
Naming your band after a mighty musical figure whose work has preceded your group's by almost a couple of centuries takes some moxie, but don't mistake this choice for hubris. It's not quite a tribute, says Brahms's Cale Parks, but rather a way to channel something from his past.
By REYAN ALI | February 22, 2011

Born Ruffians | Say It

Warp (2010)
Over the past half of Warp’s robust 20-year run, the label’s enduring legacy as a vanguard force in electronic music has drifted as its tastes have gone positively eclectic. The mixed-media future folk of Bibio, the experimental soul of Jamie Lidell, the polished post-punk nuts of Maximo Park.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | May 26, 2010

LCD Soundsystem | This Is Happening

DFA (2010)
If the self-conscious hypercontrivance of James Murphy ever appears to you at odds with his relentless quest for abandon, I hear ya.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | May 11, 2010

Booka Shade | More!

Get Physical (2010)
Booka Shade get back to where they once belonged.
By MIKAEL WOOD | May 04, 2010

Love by the numbers

The Blow and Laura Marling make their cases at SPACE Gallery
Khaela Maricich, of the Portland, Oregon-based, low-budget electro-pop group the Blow, and Britain’s dauntingly young and talented folk star Laura Marling don’t, frankly, deserve to be lumped together like this.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 05, 2010

Master stroke

Caribou’s Swim rules the pool
Stranding travelers across the continent as it forged surreal panoramas in the sky, the ash spewed forth by Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull might rank among 21st-century Europe’s most impressive natural disasters, but it didn’t quite register with Dan Snaith.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | April 27, 2010

Hot Chip | One Life Stand

Astralwerks (2010)
Four albums into a career that appeared to begin as an art-school goof, Hot Chip look more likely than any of their peers to ascend one day to the intellectual electro-pop heights of Pet Shop Boys or Scritti Politti.
By MIKAEL WOOD | February 16, 2010

Four Tet | There Is Love In You

Domino (2010)
In the five years since Kieran Hebden a/k/a Four Tet last dropped a full-length, the playing field has been seriously leveled for sample-based electronic music.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | February 02, 2010

Various Artists | Pop Ambient

Kompakt (2010)
It'd be easy to understand a resistance to "ambient" music — beyond all of its unfortunate Enya and dusty Eno connotations.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | January 27, 2010

Matias Aguayo | Ay Ay Ay

Kompakt (2009)
You know the old saying: you can lead a horse to dance music, but you can’t make it sign up for a Beatport account.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | November 03, 2009

First annual We Push Buttons Festival

Sibilance
The successful first-annual WE PUSH BUTTONS: ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL wrapped up on Saturday night.
By PORTLAND PHOENIX MUSIC STAFF | September 30, 2009

Eno Moebius Roedelius | Cluster and Eno/After the Heat

Bureau B (2009)
Krautrock pioneers proved much more simpático musical partners than either the fractious Roxy Music or the British classical avant-garde milieu that thought of Eno as an untrained fanboy.
By GUSTAVO TURNER | September 22, 2009

Gus Gus | 24-7

Kompact (2009)
Letting the music take control is a primary tenet of the dance-floor ethos — but that's only because dance music is by nature submissive. Even at its most sonically rich, dance music remains a utility, and even when it demands your attention, it does so in service to your good times.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | September 15, 2009

Bound for greatness

An Exact Change sampler
Twenty years ago, Damon and Naomi founded Exact Change, a small publishing house (okay, a small publishing room) specializing in a wide range of near-forgotten texts from the far-flung fringes of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, and other outcroppings of the 20th century avant-garde.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | September 16, 2009

King Cannibal | Let The Night Roar

Ninja Tune (2009)
King Cannibal is the latest incarnation of the artist formerly known as Zilla, a mixtape prodigy (check the supremely eclectic mid-'00s One Foot in the Fire, One Fist in the Air , if you can track it down) who managed to impress even the jaded Warp Records honchos a few years back.
By GUSTAVO TURNER | September 02, 2009

Shudder to think

Chill out this summer with Goose Bumps, Vol. 3
With the tools available to electronic musicians — software and limitless collaborators available through the Internet — the only limiting agents are ambition and work ethic. Well, talent, too, but that can be as easily wasted as ever if you don’t know how to use the platforms available to you for putting it on display.
By SAM PFEIFLE | July 08, 2009

Bibio | Ambivalence Avenue

Warp (2009)
Since this new record by Wolverhampton's Stephen James Wilkinson (a/k/a Bibio) has done nothing but delight me, I'm going to honor the sentiments posted to his MySpace blog and spare him the f-word and all variants thereof.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | July 01, 2009

The other river rave

Soul Clap and Marz bring life to the banks
When heads deserted the Chinatown-warehouse rave scene in the late '90s, the house loyalists from Soul Clap and Marz Entertainment were still cracking glow sticks.
By CHRIS FARAONE | June 16, 2009

Weird and wired

A small band of electronic music acts take on a rock ’n’ roll city
It is, of course, difficult to attach a single sound to a city. And Providence is no exception.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 03, 2009

Same difference

It's a pleasure keeping the Field on repeat
"I grew so weary of playing by myself on the laptop. I felt so controlled by the computer."
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | May 12, 2009

Taking the B-boys to School

The Other MIT Crew
You may have noticed, hip-hop dance has gone legit — or at least slightly commercial.
By LISA SPINELLI | April 22, 2009

Black Dice | Repo

Paw Tracks (2009)
Spearheaded by Brooklyn trio Black Dice and their peers, American noise rock is less like the pure noise of Merzbow and more like a renewal of dark, grinding industrial rhythms.
By MICHAEL PATRICK BRADY | April 06, 2009

French tickler

Voulez-vous coucher avec Sébastien Tellier?
"The French language is perfect for talking about sex," muses hirsute Parisian singer and electronic-musician Sébastien Tellier.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | April 02, 2009

Dance, dance, evolution

The secret weekend start the party with Energy Broadcast System
They've been working together for a long time, since the late 1990s in Florida and the nascent Slowing Room, which came to Maine to become early innovators of the Portland electronic music scene.
By SAM PFEIFLE | February 04, 2009

Various Artists | Money Will Ruin Everything

Rune Grammofon (2009)
Asked to describe his label Rune Grammofon's output, Rune Kristoffersen uncomfortably offers, "It's typically somewhere between improvised, electronic, contemporary . . . ," before fading off.
By DEVIN KING | February 03, 2009

Quitters, tinklers, tacklers, and whoppers

The Big Hurt: Music news in brief
David Berman of Silver Jews intends to quit the music biz and concentrate on writing prose, says a post on the Drag City Web site.
By DAVID THORPE | February 02, 2009

Rare Frequencies: Callithumpian Consort, Thurston Moore and Bill Nace

Louder than bombs
Although composer JOHN CAGE is best known for 4'33" of silence, he could raise a ruckus when the mood struck.
By SUSANNA BOLLE | January 20, 2009

Review: Drew Brown | Tiago La Is Losing the Plot

Lex (2009)
You know how Brian Eno is supposed to have said something like, "Only 5000 people ever bought a Velvet Underground album, but every single one of them started a band"?
By GUSTAVO TURNER | January 13, 2009

Review: Humcrush | Rest at World's End

Rune Grammofon (2009)
Replete with bands who weave jazz, modern composition, and electronic music, the Rune Grammofon label captures a thriving scene of Norwegian improvisers and composers.
By DEVIN KING | January 13, 2009

This old house

Rise celebrates 10 years on the edge
You wouldn't know it, but throbbing away in the upper two floors of that tiny wedge of a building splitting Stuart Street and Columbus Avenue is Rise: Boston's only after-hours nightclub.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | January 12, 2009